a river in egypt
by SylverEyes
Summary: Beck is in serious denial. Thankfully, he has Cat anyway.


Another short, cute, fluffy little drabble this time focusing on Beck and Cat, written for LovelyAmelie's prompt "there is a light that never goes out". Also I wanted to write sick!Beck. Enjoy!

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"Cat. Cat…!" Beck moaned piteously from where he lay underneath a mountain of covers. He sniffled quietly before sneezing which led to a throat-tearing session of coughing in which he felt the stuff in his chest move around a bit.

"Cat…" he called once more, eyes watering as he tried to catch his breath again.

Beck had a nasty flu which had him laid out in bed for the past day, and unable to function correctly in school almost the entire week. His head pounded, his stomach rolled, his lungs were clogged with junk. He found himself staring at a test in front of him for the entire period, mind completely blank.

At lunch he had his head down on his arms with his eyes closed, hoping that maybe that he could pretend the light and noise weren't so loud. Everyone seemed concerned, but it was Tori who directly faced the subject first.

"Beck, you look really sick."

Beck Oliver does not get sick. He doesn't sniffle, he doesn't sneeze, he doesn't cough. His eyes don't get red and puffy, his skin doesn't get pale and he certainly doesn't throw up.

"I am not sick,"

Tori looked like she was about to argue, but Jade stepped in to start insulting her and for once Beck was glad because he didn't think that he could handle an argument right now—not that he would lose. But there was no point in taking chances.

His parents tried to force him to stay home on Thursday but he refused, dragging his feet to school. Clearly he just needed to get a little more sleep and he would be fine. His doctor had always told him that it was only a matter of time before his nights of four hours of sleep would catch up to him. Beck would try not to doubt that man again.

He tripped, stumbled, slurred his words, fell asleep in the sunlight on his desk during one of the periods and steadfastly repeated to himself and everyone else who asked him that he was not sick, not sick because Beck Oliver did not get sick. He didn't get sick even more than he never fell, because he did fall over in the hallway but that didn't possibly mean anything even though Beck Oliver doesn't trip. Because he doesn't get sick.

He was, however, forced to accept the 'sick' conclusion when he woke up on Saturday morning and became so dizzy when he tried to get up that he decided he wasn't going to attempt that again in the next twenty-four hours. So he did the only thing any self-respecting man who was absolutely not sick would do.

He called Cat.

"What is it, Beck?" she asked as she hurried back to his bed from the microwave where she was heating up some soup for him to eat. The smell lingered about her faintly, and Beck found that he liked it.

"I can't reach the remote."

In some distant part of his mind, Beck realized that this was the most pathetic he had probably ever sounded, but that was why he had called Cat in the first place. She had known him the longest; she had been there when he had to get his appendix taken out and couldn't go back to school for more than a week. She was patient, inexhaustible, and extremely gentle with her 'little sick boy' as she called him, and Beck couldn't have asked for anything more.

The redhead handed him the remote to the television, which Beck used to turn it on, flip through a few channels, get frustrated that there was nothing on to watch and throw it on the floor. This whole time Cat used a damp washcloth to wipe the sweat off of his forehead and smooth down his bed covers, picking up the remote off the floor where it fell and putting it back within reachable distance on the bedside table.

Something about Cat and her effervescence made Beck feel well-looked-after, something that he rarely felt around his girlfriend. He had called Jade once when he was really sick and projectile vomiting, and she sat at the end of his bed watching TV and wrinkling her nose at the smell, telling him to "empty his own puke-filled bucket".

"Cat I feel like shit," he mumbled, rolling over onto his side and wishing he had left the TV on.

"I know, but you'll be okay. I promise."

Beck shifted under his covers, feeling his pajama pants sticking to his legs with cold sweat and knowing that he probably smelled pretty awful. He watched Cat as she sat on the edge of his bed next to him, twirling a red lock around her finger and texting with amazing speed with her other hand, probably letting Jade know how he was. Cat seemed exempt from Jade's general "I hate everyone rule" which was good because if it had been, say, Tori taking care of him today he would be in for some shouting.

She went back to the microwave where the soup was done heating up while Beck exerted an extreme amount of effort among lots of groaning to reach the remote and start some detective show that took far too much effort to think about and made his head hurt even more. He switched to a kid's channel and settled on Dora the Explorer, figuring it should be mindless and brain dead enough for him to stomach at the moment.

By the time Cat came back with a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup Beck's eyes were glazed over as he stared at the flickering screen in front of him. "Beck," she shook his shoulder lightly. "I have your soup, can you sit up a little bit?"

He did as he was told, but grabbed the spoon and bowl himself, refusing to let her spoon feed him. He was going to hold onto that shred of dignity at least.

They sat in silence for a few minutes until Beck's eyes wandered back to the television screen and he became inordinately upset.

"I don't understand why they can't just let Swiper take some things, because if they were made once before they can be made again, right? Besides, they don't know if he's going to use them and put them back. I bet they've never even taken the time to get to know him, and who wouldn't want to get to know a fox with a purple mask? It's like those stupid kids who won't give the Trix rabbit any Trix even though it's _his _stuff because he's the Trix rabbit it's not like there's the Trix kids; he doesn't even want to take it all he just wants a little bit but that's not okay with them—"

Beck was now hyperventilating which brought on another vigorous minute of coughing. And while in normal circumstances Cat normally would have gotten upset right along with him, the inextinguishable light inside of her lifted a smile to those lips and she patted his head, taking the warm bowl and spoon from his hands so that he wouldn't spill the soup all over himself.

"You need to calm down or you'll lose your voice from coughing."

She leaned down and kissed his cheek, and Beck suddenly felt like he could forgive those kids with the Trix yogurt.


End file.
